The evidence of the last 20 years of recurring output busts and rapid reversals of the current account in emerging markets indicates that domestic agents may not be able to borrow in international capital markets to fully insure themselves against internal and external shocks. This paper models...

In an estimated two-country DSGE model, we find that shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment account for more than half of the forecast variance of cyclical fluctuations in the US trade balance. Both domestic and foreign marginal efficiency shocks have a substantial impact on the...

This thesis comprises three self-contained chapters that each contributes new insights to this field of empirical macroeconomics. Chapter 1 examines the role of shocks to consumer misperceptions in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations. This chapter employs a Bayesian estimation of a New...